3 out of 5

I suspect I’m supposed to dislike Eden’s Trail.  At a glance, there are a few things against it – first, it’s printed in a gimmicky “Cinemascope,” with the binding on the short side of the page (via two staples), making the book be turned sideways, by normal comic reading standards, and allowing for it to be drawn in a widescreen format.  Second, it’s obviously digital art, which, though all art (it seems) has some digital component now, Eden’s looks completely digital, which could be a strike for those who like their comics with a bit of hand-drawn flair.  Third, along with the widescreen gimmick, you could say that the anime influence to the art is a gimmick as well, as Marvel, at the time, was jumping on that bandwagon to try to get some extra fans and sales.  And, lastly, Chuck Austen’s name is on it, which could break it for some people… but whether it does or doesn’t, his Marvel work forever seems to carry some burden of infamy along with it.

So one by one:

The Cinemascope is a gimmick, here, which actually works incredibly well.  The interior is presented like a film, and going in tandem with the second nit about the digital art, Steve’s work relies on stitching together fore, mid, and background objects and using different techniques for different textures, and blur effects and etc., so the display fits, and it’s not formatted after-the-fact – panels and layouts are drawn with the widescreen in mind, and though the environments in the “TriLands” setting are rather sparse, they are beautifully sparse – rich in subtle detail and texturing that Uy’s approach allows – so it really adds to a sense of development and openness that the lands are meant to imbue.  The anime art you can go either way, I suppose, but I love Steve’s characters.  There are many similarities across all of his works, and for sure it is manga-ish in the way everyone has somewhat childish features, the figures are given a minimum of lines to express their stance or emotions and the hair is always spiky – but there exists, at the same time, an acceptance of Western art and pacing in Steve’s work, allowing us moments of contemplation and a bit more pacing in the action than the quick-cuts of manga normally go for.  So instead of it being just an anime rip, I find it to be a true balance between U.S. and Asian styles, a truly unique blend instantly identifiable to the artist, but growing in compositional skill over the years as well.  Lastly: Chuck Austen.  Now I’m not as hard on Chuck as most people, and I’ve quite thoroughly enjoyed a couple things he’s put out.  But – he is a ham, for sure, and if you let him try to plot too deviously, you’re going to wind up with something over-wrought and cheesy.  Which is why it’s good that he’s limited by Uy’s small cast of characters and plot outline here – it keeps him grounded in some great territory where he can bust out his jokes and be forced to keep the plot moving without having to worry about developing anything, necessarily.  Which sounds like a horrible condemnation of the man’s writing skills, and doesn’t mention that I think the best thing he wrote was not comedy (his MAX Eternals mini), but either way, the forced structure works for him.

Of which some more words should be blabbed – Eden’s Trail does not feature on Steve’s website, and I can’t find much info related to it.  People don’t seem to have said too much about it beyond the first issue.  One site explains that Steve has “disowned” the series, because it was scripted by him (the interior credits show it as Chuck’s script adapted from Steve’s story), but Marvel decided to chuck his script and hand it over to Chuck Austen with just the story outline and the art and dialogue bubbles already figured in to things, so Chuck essentially just played fill-in-the-caption.  Now I have no idea how accurate that is, or how willing / aware any of the involved parties were in those decisions, but: yes, that sounds like it must’ve sucked for Steve and it admittedly seems to have robbed the book of its original goals of playing within Marvel continuity (there was a promised tie in to the Marvel U which I think we’re getting in the last issue but if so, the reference is completely lost on me) as well as a general emotional impact that may have come with smoother character development.

The… the story?  Ugh, you people and your details.  Mag is a criminal, part of a heist gone wrong.  He helps a crew to rob Tila’s bar, and though he doesn’t really want anything to do with it, Random Guy Latch is in the bar and prevents the robbery… blowing up Tila’s bar in the process.  To make it up to her, he agrees to help her find a treasure.

It occurs to me now that the treasure could’ve been invented wholesale by Chuck, as there’s mention of a map to the treasure which we never see in the book.  Though there’s a graceful, patient feel and look to the book, and issue to issue it reads incredibly well, there are large leaps in story aspects between issues that may be due to the process by which this was cobbled together.  Some elements make sense because the sense is forced upon you, and I wonder if Steve’s original script connected various functions of the TriLands together a bit better.  We’ll never know.  Austen’s script is not bad, and doesn’t seem disjointed from the art, but the inter-relations of the characters again seem more forced upon us than reasonable.  But by the same token, I wonder if I enjoyed these characters more than I would have had it been a more serious book, because Chuck takes a pretty light-hearted approach to everything, most pages worth some chuckles or smiles or even a couple laughs.

Enough?  It’s not imbalanced, it’s not poorly written.  Eden’s Trail is an enjoyable book that succeeds moreso because of its gimmicks (though sacrific.  But it never quite succeeds in going anywhere with its story, except to the last page, but it can be read and re-read thanks to Chuck’s poppy pacing and Steve Uy’s gorgeous and deep visuals.  It would’ve been nice to see this world and story given more room to grow.